After a solid premiere, Believe, NBC’s thriller from Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón and J.J. Abrams, settles into its regular Sundays at 9 p.m. time slot March 16 with a second episode that promises to reveal more about Kyle MacLachlan’s well-dressed Skouras, who’s battling his former partner Winter (Delroy Lindo) for control of 10-year-old Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) and her powers.

“Much more time is spent explaining who he is, where he’s from, and why he’s interested in Bo,” says MacLachlan, who took his cues for creating the character from something Cuarón did when he was directing the pilot. “Alfonso came in, and he started coating my hair in this black mascara, because my hair was sort of brown, and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” he recalls, laughing. “But then I saw the finished product, and it looked very, very interesting. So it said to me that he was looking for somebody who is slightly eccentric and a little electric. I’m trying to follow his lead as much as possible.”

To get to know the actor better, we gave him one of our EW Pop Culture Personality Tests. Watch the video below to see excellent impressions of Marlon Brando and Christopher Walken.

Note: He also admitted to us that he taped and memorized Robert Shaw’s great Jaws monologue about the USS Indianapolis so he could pull it out as a party trick. Sadly, we didn’t get him to do that on camera. Next time…

And bonus! MacLachlan also stopped by Entertainment Weekly Radio (SiriusXM 105) and spoke to Jessica Shaw and Meeta Agrawal about how he originally saw his character on Sex and the City and his favorite extracurricular activity while filming Showgirls.